Because small devices such as cellular phones have hardware restrictions such as lower memory, low-power CPUs with limited or no storage capabilities, small monochrome display screens, single-character fonts and restricted input methods (the absence of a keyboard or a mouse), there is a need for a simpler form of HTML.[2]

C-HTML does not support tables, image maps, multiple fonts and styling of fonts, background colors and images, frames, or style sheets, and is limited to a monochromatic display.[3]

The language is defined so that all the basic interactive operations can be done by a combination of four buttons and not by two-dimensional cursor movement: cursor forward, cursor backward, select, and back/stop. Functionality requiring two-dimensional cursor pointing, like image maps, is excluded from C-HTML.